Caring for miscarriages

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Thursday the 3rd of October.

This is WORLD Radio, and we’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

First up on The World and Everything in It…debunking myths around caring for women with pregnancy complications.

DEBATE: Moderator 1: …Senator, your time is up. Nora?
Moderator 2: Thank you. Now to the issue of Reproductive Rights…

On Tuesday night, Ohio Senator JD Vance and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz debated issues ranging from the economy to abortion. During the conversation, Governor Walz told a story to illustrate his concerns about pro-life state laws.

WALZ: There's a young woman named Amber Thurman. She happened to be in Georgia, a restrictive state. Because of that, she had to travel a long distance to North Carolina to try and get her care. Amber Thurman died in that journey back and forth…

The moral of the story for Walz?

WALZ: …There's a very real chance had Amber Thurman lived in Minnesota, she would be alive today.

So is it true that pro-life laws prevent women from getting life-saving medical treatments…or is there more to the story?

Joining us now to talk about it is WORLD’s life beat reporter Leah Savas.

REICHARD: Leah, good morning.

LEAH SAVAS: Good morning, Mary.

REICHARD: Well, there are a lot of state laws, but let's just focus on Georgia to start with. What does the Georgia law prohibit?

SAVAS: So the Georgia law protects babies from abortion once they have detectable heartbeats, and it defines abortion as using a substance or instrument with the purpose of intentionally terminating a pregnancy knowing that it will likely cause the death of an unborn child. It also clarifies that removing an unborn child who died in a miscarriage, or an unborn child who implanted outside of the womb in an ectopic pregnancy, is not an abortion. It also allows for abortion in medical emergencies, which it defines, as you know, when the life of the mother is at risk or if she faces potential physical impairment of a major bodily function.

REICHARD: So that's the law, but we know that as of Monday, that law is no longer enforceable because a state court judge ruled it was unconstitutional. But even that's not the final word, because the state is appealing it to the state Supreme Court.

But you know, Governor Walz was pretty vague as to how Amber Thurman actually died. Can you tell us more background about her?

SAVAS: Yeah, so the details that Governor Walz gave were actually just inaccurate altogether. He talked about her as if she had died on the trip back from getting an abortion in North Carolina. But the reality is that she went to North Carolina, ended up getting the abortion drug, so the drugs involved in chemical abortion, she took the first one in North Carolina and then the second one back in Georgia. When she had returned after taking those drugs, she experienced complications because the drugs were unsuccessful at removing all of the parts of the pregnancy. So whether it was body parts of the babies or other pregnancy tissue, the chemicals had not actually removed all of that, so she ended up having major complications.

She had sepsis and went to the hospital, and normally, doctors would be performing a D&C to remove the remaining pregnancy tissue, but for whatever reason, the hospital did not take that step. They kept delaying and delaying offering her a D&C. She eventually died during surgery. So the ProPublica article says that that procedure specifically was illegal in Georgia, when in reality, it was just illegal to use that procedure if you're using it to kill a child in the womb. And the article claims that her death really came down to the pro-life laws in the state. But in reality, we don't know what was going through the doctor's minds at the time. We don't know why they delayed giving her a D&C. Now, supposedly, the babies were already dead because of the abortion drugs. That's why pro-life groups are pointing out that what really killed Amber Thurman was complications from a chemical abortion, and sepsis is a known complication.

REICHARD: And that's what actually killed her. Okay, well, you have interviewed several OB-GYNs for your reporting. What have they told you about how state laws affect their work?

SAVAS: Yeah, so doctors in other pro-life states that I've talked to, they tell me that pro-life laws have not changed how they practice. They still can treat miscarriages as before, using both D&Cs and also even the drugs used in chemical abortions. And they say that they are not afraid of prosecution because they understand that the laws allow for that. There is one OB-GYN I spoke with who's in Kansas. His name is Dr Jonathan Scrafford. He made this observation.

DR. SCRAFFORD: Where are the examples of people who did give appropriate medical care and then were convicted? Or their lives were ruined, they went bankrupt, they lost their job because of these things? There has to be some burden of proof at some point about these concerns."

Now, he operates under very permissive abortion laws in Kansas, but he's at a pro-life Catholic hospital that prohibits elective abortions. He said he still performs D&Cs on miscarriages regularly, and he's never faced pushback from the hospital. He said that there could be other factors at play in these stories of doctors in pro-life states being hesitant to perform D&Cs, and he thinks often it probably has nothing to do with politics or the state's abortion laws. Here's another comment from him.

DR. SCRAFFORD: Sometimes we see a lack of an intervention and and we immediately attribute it to it must have been because of fear of political consequence, whereas, as a physician, I know that most of the time that an intervention is not performed, it's because the physician didn't think it was medically appropriate.

And in Amber Thurman's case, specifically, the ProPublica article points out that her blood pressure was really low when she first got to the hospital, and that doctors gave her blood pressure medication to help it increase. So Dr Scrafford says it's possible that they didn't want to do a D&C on her right away, because since she had such low blood pressure, she could die during the process, so they wanted to wait until they could get that back up. So who knows, but there could be other explanations.

REICHARD: Leah, before we go, I'm wondering, do you have any takeaways from the vice presidential debate and how Senator JD Vance presented the pro life position?

SAVAS: Yeah, so he did a good job showing compassion for women facing unplanned pregnancies, and pointing out how radical the Democratic Party is on abortion. But I wish he would have humanized unborn babies more. I wish he would have given attention to babies throughout pregnancy, and not just in in later in pregnancy, you know, in later abortions, or babies born alive and botched abortions. He also could have done a better job actually responding to the inaccurate representation of Amber Thurman's story and of the Georgia law. There was a lot of things missing in that conversation, a lot of opportunities that he had to say what the Georgia law actually calls for and what it prohibits, and he didn't. He just, he just didn't do that. So I think that was a missed opportunity.

REICHARD: Leah Savas reports on abortion and life issues for WORLD. Leah, thank you for this report.

SAVAS: Thanks for having me.

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